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This Time Next Year
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
“This time next year we’ll be millionaires!”
—Derek Trotter
CEO of Trotters Independent Traders
You probably spend a great deal of time setting business goals, working on strategy and planning for growth. It’s the sensible thing to do. After all how can you get to where you want to go if you don’t know where you’re headed.
When was the last time you thought about your customers goals? What about where she wants to be this time next year? The only way to become a part of your customer’s story is to understand her story. It turns out that viewing your business through your customer’s lens is a great business strategy.
Image by Johnny Vulcan.
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Building A Brand Versus Selling A Commodity
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
Ideas spread, products become irreplaceable, and businesses grow when they stop being mere commodities and have meaning attached to them. It’s not possible to be a brand and a commodity all at once. Customers don’t demonstrate loyalty to commodities but they can fall in love with a brand.
PRODUCT-MEANING=COMMODITY
PRODUCT+MEANING=BRAND
Anything you care to think about from a book to a city, a graffiti artist to a platform, a store to a TV show can stop being a commodity and become a brand. Hundreds of business have a ‘swoosh’ based logo. Only one has managed to attach meaning to it.
Story (as distinct from just narrative) is how we attach meaning and significance to anything. That’s why the world’s leading brands and savvy entrepreneurs work hard to tell a better one.
Image by Steve Wilhelm.
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Worrying About The Competition
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Rachael showed up for her trial as a part-time dishwasher in a local cafe, donned her apron and was sent into battle alongside Lolita. Lolita who was a fairly recent addition to the staff was worried, the manager had already had a word with her about picking up the pace at busy times. As she showed Rachael the ropes she tried her best to put her off, asking her why she didn’t look for a better, more glamorous job.
The poor girl then spent the rest of the afternoon accidentally dropping and breaking things.
If you care more about protecting what you’ve got than being generous, you’ve already lost.
If you spend your time looking over your shoulder, how will you find time to make a difference?
If you think someone can do your job better than you, they probably can.
If you believe that someone can replace you, they probably should.
If you don’t think you’ll be missed when you’re gone, then why are you staying?
If you work at being the best you can be, you won’t have to worry about the competition.
Image by CIMMYT
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Perfect
When a Ryanair flight touches down on time a fanfare sounds over the public address system to celebrate the fact. Flights that arrive on time might be cause for celebration for the airline, but that’s no longer enough to delight most passengers.
Just twenty years ago when you made an expensive long distance phone call you probably weren’t surprised to be cut off or to experience appalling call quality at the very least. If you used Skype for free today you expected to see and hear someone who was 10,000 miles away as if she were sitting in the next room.
When everything is as near perfect as it can be the perception of what it takes to be excellent shifts. When we’re used to things working the fact that they’re working isn’t enough to ‘wow’ us anymore.
When standards rise, expectations rise with them. So if everything is good enough, where is the room to delight your customers? How can you possibly stand out and create value in an almost perfect world?
Perfect isn’t what’s scarce anymore. Your customers don’t want perfect. They want you to stand in their shoes, to see the world through their eyes and they want to be touched.
Image by Ed.
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What Business Are You In?
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
More on those $5 roses that you paid $8 for last week…..
On the Saturday before Valentine’s day I went shopping for single white rose. The florist had none on display, but when I asked she went into the fridge and pulled out two dozen.
“Oh, these are not at their best. You can see they are not going to last long and we can’t use them.” she said.
“That’s a shame, so what will you do with them now?” I asked.
“Oh we’ll just throw them out, but if you want them you can have them for $3 each.”
Contrast that with my experience at the pharmacy just ten minutes before. When they didn’t have the prescribed ointment I needed in stock the young assistant phoned around four other pharmacies (the competition) trying to find it for me.
Here’s the distinction.
The florist thinks she’s in the ‘flower business’ not the ‘brightening someone’s day’ business.
The pharmacy assistant knows he’s not in the ‘drug dispensing business’.
What business are you in?
Image by Paul Cooper.
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Seth Godin On What We Need To Do Now
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
Seth and I got together yesterday and made this for you. He teaches me something every day and I know you’ll learn something from the insights he shares here.
Seth Godin : What we need to do now from Bernadette Jiwa on Vimeo.
“We’re living in a moment of time, the first moment of time when a billion people are connected, when your work is judged (more than ever before) based on what you do rather than who you are, and when credentials, access to capital, and raw power have been dwarfed by the question
“Do I care about what you do?”
We built this world for you. Not so you could watch more online videos, keep up on your feeds, and LOL with your high school friends. We built it so you could do what you’re capable of. Without apology and without excuse. Go.”
—From Seth’s latest book The Icarus Deception
Image by C.C. Chapman.
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The Difference Between Value And Valuable
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
On Saturday a single rose would have cost you $5. Today and tomorrow it’s $8. While you clearly got better value for your dollar on Saturday, the roses are more valuable to you today.
Who decides then where the value lies and what’s valuable? The value of your product isn’t just in the price you charge, it’s what the customer perceives it to be.
What makes something more valuable is the story the customer was able to tell himself after he left the florists this morning.
Image by Lynn Friedman.
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2 Questions To Answer Before Bringing An Idea To Market
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
1. How does your customer want to feel after she’s bought your product or experienced your service?
2. How are you going to get her there?
Image by Renato Targa.
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How To Get The Customers You Deserve
filed in Marketing, Storytelling, Strategy
You’ve heard a version of this story before. It goes something like this. The customer leaves the restaurant a little disgruntled after a Friday evening dinner. The service had been particularly slow, his table had waited an hour for their meal and the waitstaff hadn’t nipped his complaint in the bud. His next move is to contact the owner to give his feedback. The owner’s response….
“If you wanted fast food you should have gone to McDonald’s” and “I don’t need you or want you to come back”.
When the customer shared his story online and the reporter came knocking the restaurant owner told her the complaint was representative of a trend in people expecting too much from restaurants.
“We’re in the business to make money, we’re not there just to be a convenience to people who want to eat out.” he said.
In a city where cafe culture is thriving this posture could be one of the reasons our owner has to fill his restaurant with people who have bought a discount deal from a group buying website.
The flip side for him and the takeaway for you….
You have the opportunity to tell the story of your business to the people who you want to hear it. You get to shape the kind of brand you’d like to become. You can build your business for the customers you really want to serve.
But your customer’s experience is part of that story and they have a hand in creating the ending. If your story sends the good ones away you’ll get the customers you deserve.
Image by Steve Rhodes.
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The Business Buzzword Of 2013 ‘Platform’
filed in Entrepreneurship, Marketing, Strategy
Everywhere I look online these days I see people being urged to build a ‘platform’. The modern day platform is a digital connection to potential customers, contacts, followers or fans.
A platform then is a tool and a tactic.
There are plenty of consultants willing to help you with the ‘how to’ of building one and whole books devoted to the tactics (the knowing part).
Knowing is a far cry from doing though.
If you are to succeed at building a platform you need to be consistent at ‘the doing’ part. And to be consistent at ‘the doing’ you need to have a reason to build the platform that intersects your needs with those of your audience. Building a ‘platform’ is a far cry from building a tribe. ‘Tribes’ begin with the reason for building (doing) the thing in the first place.
Successful businesses like Airbnb and Zen Habits were born from having a reason to create the platform that served the needs of the audience. The success didn’t simply come from the platform itself.
Go ahead and build your platform so that the people who need you can find you, just remember to work out the reason you’re building it first.
Image by Peter Durand.